Ex-pentagon Analyst Gets Prison Term In Leak Case

January 21, 2006|By Richard B. Schmitt Los Angeles Times

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A former Pentagon analyst who admitted scheming with two pro-Israel lobbyists and an Israeli embassy official to influence U.S. policy in the Middle East was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison Friday for disclosing classified information.

The sentencing of Lawrence Franklin, 59, of Kearneysville, W.Va., a former Iran desk officer in the office of the Secretary of Defense, followed a plea agreement he made with prosecutors in October in which he admitted illegally leaking defense secrets, but denied that he intended to harm the country.

Franklin's prosecution has attracted particular attention because he leaked the information to representatives of a close U.S. ally. He was never accused of espionage. U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, in sentencing him Friday, called his case "odd," but added that he clearly broke the law.

The sentence is at the lower end of federal guidelines, and is likely to be further softened because of testimony Franklin is expected to offer at the trial of two co-conspirators this spring.

A former colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, Franklin was indicted last year along with two former lobbyists for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee. The government alleged a wide-ranging conspiracy to gather and disseminate secrets with the intent of influencing U.S. policy on Iran.

In pleading guilty to three felonies in October, Franklin said he never intended to break the law, and that he saw the plan as a "back-channel" way to arouse what he saw as a slumbering U.S. bureaucracy that was not taking threats to the Middle East seriously enough. Officials close to the case say Franklin was specifically concerned about the nuclear ambitions of Iran.

The two former AIPAC lobbyists, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, are scheduled to go to trial in April. Their lawyers have argued that they were engaged in routine lobbying work, and were not trafficking in classified information. Both have pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiring to communicate national defense information provided by Franklin.